[greglepore]

Eric hit it on the head. Often, you'll spend months showing a client properties, often ones that they want to see but that you know won't work, and then on a whim they'll buy something with another agent. Yes, in the age of Zillow anyone can search for properties, but often they don't want to, so the agent does the legwork, and makes the calls and finds out about zoning and reads buyer's disclosures and...

Listings require up front work, but less day-in-out activity. The real plus is that they generate other traffic for the agent. Many realtors that have experience and a client base will farm out their buyers to another agent for a small slice for this reason. Working with buyers is a PITA. And people have such a low opinion of realtors that they're often rude as hell.